A macOS application to compute image differences using Metal shaders


Mantis Shrimp

Mantis Shrimp is an image comparison tool written with the MetalSDK.

Features:

  • It's a document application, so you can save your projects and open multiple windows.
  • It supports any types of images supported by macOS. That includes JPEG, PNG, HEIC, HDR, EXR, and others.
  • It supports automatic linear RGB conversions.
  • It supports multiple color spaces, including display-P3 (DCI-P3).
  • It comes with multiple presets to compare color channels in different ways.
  • It lets you write and use your custom shaders, using Metal shading language.
  • Shaders come with some predefined functions and variables, including time, so you can use this as a shader sandbox, or "shader toy".
  • Basic cpp-based syntax highlighting, with some Metal keywords.
  • It can record clips in mp4, for animated shaders.

Refer to the manual for usage instructions.

About the name

Mantis shrimps have between 12 and 16 types of photoreceptor cells, so the name made sense for an app that lets you see RGB channels in many different ways.

Also, I wanted to keep alive the name because it was given by my team lead, Ian, to an internal web tool that did something similar (but in the CPU, and only for 8-bit images).

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